On stage at CES today, Jonney Shih proclaimed his company's new Transformer the world's first 4-in-1 device. By that he meant that it's a Windows laptop and tablet as well as an Android laptop and tablet. This new 13.3-inch slate transforms both physically and virtually thanks to the company's new dual-OS setup. A quick switch of three or four seconds is all that's required to morph you from the Windows 8 environment into the familiar Android UI and vice versa.

And all this is actively promoted and supported by Intel. So, Microsoft creates an operating system that is supposed to be both desktop and tablet operating system. However, nobody wants it. So, Intel and PC makers confuse everything even more by... Adding Android to the mix? What?

That's cool that a laptop satisfies your needs, but that doesn't hold true for everybody, every task, and every need. In some situations a desktop is the best choice, in others a laptop might be, in yet others a tablet may suffice. Again, it isn't simply a matter of where you want to use the computer like sitting at a desk or sitting on a couch.

Yes, yes, but I'm talking about software and UI here. The software needs to scale over several types of devices, either through some ingenious new UI that works equally well for touch and for mouse + keyboard or by switching depending on context. Laptops already share the UI with desktops. I don't want to do away with the specialised desktop, I want better portable computing.

The alternative to a scalable or modal UI is cloud computing. It has a thing in common with tablets in that it sucks, albeit for different reasons.